The variety of planes is pretty good, but it could be better. They did a great job of accurately modeling the physics of flight. Also, the enemy planes are smart. They'll juke and do whatever they can to shake you off. They aren't too good in the first version, but in subsequent revisions they got a lot better.

The Bad

As compared to the Lawrence Holland trilogy, specifically Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, this game doesn't feature a campaign mode. You can play a "career", but you'll be stuck with the same plane for 20 or 40 missions and the war will progress pretty much the same as it did historically, with only slight variations depending on how well you personally perform. D-Day can occur about a month sooner or later, and the war can end sooner or later. The way SWOTL handled "campaigns" is a lot more fun, because you can actually change the outcome of the war. In this game, D-Day will always occur, and the Germans will eventually lose.

Where are the experimental planes (Do 335, Go 229, Me 163, He 162, etc.)?! Where are the Russian and Italian planes?! I'm still waiting on a WWII game that features Fiats, Macchis, and MiGs! Why can't you fly bombers?! SWOTL so far is the best WWII game for flying bombers. In most of these new games you can only fly fighters, but lining up that Norden bombsight and raining bombs down while fighting off Me109s is really fun!

Also, there isn't a very big variety of "death animations". In other words, when you destroy a plane, what do you see? In this game, the enemy's engine will smoke and it will slowly glide down while the enemy pilot still has control, or the wing will break off in a ball of flame. Most of these types of games don't have a very big variety of death animations. The guys who make these animations need to watch some more documentary footage and create some new stuff!

The Bottom Line

This is a solid WWII aircraft simulation. It is better in some ways and worse in others than Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, but overall it's very realistic and pretty awesome.